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Farewell party 2019

2/26に行われた送別会について報告させて頂きます。送別会は仙台第一生命タワービルの北の家族という居酒屋で行われました。学生や教員含め約30名の方に参加して頂きました。I will report about farewell party held on February 26th. The party was held at "北の家族" in Sendai Daiichi life tower building.About 30 people attended the party.

乾杯のあいさつは門田先生にして頂きました。乾杯後は各テーブルとても会話が盛り上がっていました。Kadota-sensei did opening speech.After the speech, everyone had a nice chat.

他のテーブルはどんな話をしていたのか分かりませんが、自分のテーブルでは留学生が日本語を練習したいとのことだったので日本語のみで会話したり、日本酒を「It's special water! 0%!」などと言って飲み合ったりしていました。普段のまじめな姿から想像できない光景だったのでとても笑いました。I don't know about other tables.But in our table, international student wanted to talk in Japanese, so we talked in Japanese.And, we said that "Sake is just special water! It is 0%!" and drank Sake.It was unimaginable scene, different from always.(笑)

程よくお酒と食事を楽しんだ所で、レクリエーションが始まりました。Hamzaさんに車でプロジェクターを会場まで運んで頂いてもらっていたので、それを使ってまずは斎藤君が準備したクイズ大会が始まりました。いつの何の会の写真か当てるゲームと、いくつかのプロフィール情報からそれは研究室の誰かを当てるゲームでした。結構難しくて私は分かりませんでした・・・正解者にはお菓子の袋詰めやマウスパッド等の景品がもらえる豪華なクイズ大会でした。斎藤君の苦労の甲斐あって、クイズ大会はとても盛り上がりました。Next, recreation began.Hamza-san bring projector by his car. Using the projector, saito-kun held quiz game.First game was "When was this photo taken?". Next game was "Who is him/her".It was very difficult for me...A person who gave the right answer got the prize.We had so much fun at the quiz. Thank you, Saito-kun.

次にChen君とLiu君が卒業生のために、名前や似顔絵が金で出来ている豪華なプレートをプレゼントしました。かなり前から時間かけて作成したようで、プロジェクターを使ってそのプレートの作成プロセスも説明してくれました。ミニ談話会みたいでした（笑）Then, Chen-kun and Liu-kun gave graduate students the gorgeous plates on which portrait is written.They had prepared it long before. And they explained process of the plates.It was like a Danwa-kai.(笑)

次は卒業生にプレゼントを渡しました。私がデパートなどで揃えました。秋田さんには、新しい土地で始まる新しい生活で寂しくないようにとgoogle home mini。Thaoさんには、有田焼でできたリッチなマグカップ。外国人にプレゼントを選ぶのは人生初だったので悩みました。寺西さんには、日本で一番高い(らしい)紅茶、マリアジュフレール。森山さんには、実用的なプレゼントの車のヘッドライト。金子さんには、新生活用にとコーヒーメーカー(実は私のものと全く同じ)。森村さんは不在でしたが、後日彼のアップルウォッチで使える革バンドをプレゼントしました。Next, I gave presents to graduate students. I prepare those.For Akita-san, I chose google home mini. Because I don't want him to feel loneliness in new life.For Thao-san, I chose cup that was made by Arita-yaki. It was first time for me to chose present for foreigner.For Teranishi-san, I chose the most expensive(maybe) tea in japan, Mariage Freres.For Moriyama-san, I chose practical present, Headlight for his car.For Kaneko-san, I chose coffee maker(I have exactly the same one).Morimura-san was absent. But I gave him leather band for his apple watch later.

プレゼントを渡した際にそれぞれからコメントを頂きました。近々去ってしまうということでAndreaさんからもコメントを頂きました。これまでの思い出や後輩に伝えたい事など先輩らしいありがたいお言葉をいただきました。When I gave them the presents, they made comments. Andrea-san will leave soon, so she also made a comment.They made comments about memories and for junior. It was good comment as senior.

その後は残りの時間を楽しみました。最後に田中先生の卒業生へ向けたお話をしていただき、集合写真を撮って、塚本先生に一本締めして頂きました。After that, we had fun to the last.At last, Tanaka-sensei had a talk for graduate students. And we took a group picture. And Tukamoto-sensei did "Ippon-jime".

会場やプレートの準備などして頂いた、salmanさん、斎藤君、Chen君、Liu君、Hamzaさん、ご協力ありがとうございました。そして卒業生の皆さん、研究室では助言やその他様々場面で本当にお世話になりました。新しい環境でも頑張って下さい。そして機会があれば研究室を訪れて下さい！Salman-san, Saito-kun, Chen-kun, Liu-kun, Hamza-san, thank you for your cooperation.And graduate students, Thank you very much for your help all these years. Keep doing your best! And if there are any chances, meet again!

IEEE MEMS 2019 Conference

Hello, this is Salman, a D1 student in Tanaka Lab. This time I would like to report on the 32nd IEEE MEMS conference that was held in Seoul, South Korea, on 27-31 January 2019. There is a direct flight from Sendai to Seoul, so the transport was very convenient. I was at the same fligt with Nishino-san, Zhu-san, Ono-sensei (Ono Lab), and to my surprise, Hayasaka-san (Lin Lab @UCB, an alumni of our lab). I knew that Hayasaka-san will also present in this conference, but just know that he is departing from Japan.

In Seoul, I mainly used subway for commuting. As of my experience, subway in Seoul was not as precise as in Japan (with around 2 minutes delay), but the price was cheaper in compared to Japan, with the same level of convenience. For comparison, I spent only KRW 1,350 (equivalent to around JPY 150) for a 45 minutes ride with 3 transfers. In Sendai we need JPY 200 to commute from Aobayama to Kawauchi (3 minutes). Maybe that is the cost of deeply digging Aobayama to build the railway. Payments were done using Tmoney card, similar to SUICA or ICSCA card in Sendai. Below is the smartphone application I used for confirming local subway schedule. It was more convenient and precise compared to Google Maps, which sometimes only shows station names in Korean Hangul. Hopefully this information can be useful for any of our lab members (or any reader of this blog) in the future while visiting South Korea.

On the first day, there was only a welcome reception. In the welcome reception, I met Liu-san (Dr., Huawei) and Konno-san (Murata Finland), both of them are alumni of our lab. They are not presenting in the conference, but delegated by their company to see if there is any potential technologies for them in this conference.

I found Kaneko-san's paper on the top rack at MDPI Micromachines' booth. Maybe outstanding paper?

The technical session started on the 2nd day. There was a plenary talk by Prof. Kevin Parker (Harvard). His talk was on his (with his group) efforts on realizing an artificial heart, which can be analogized as a mechanical pump. Their effort started from materials having contracting (pumping) ability, which corresponds to the tissue of our heart. From that goal also they were subsequently performing research on jellyfish, which seems to have a similar behavior. Their current challenge is to realize the organ itself, which consists of the tissues.

My impression on the first day of technical program (and actually the whole conference) was that the presentations on bio-MEMS and micro-fluidics was dominant (which is not my expertise). I was not so familiar with the topics, so it was a good overview to me on the topic. Another focus on this day was the micro-robotics session. It was interesting to see videos of moving micro-robots. This day was closed with Korean Food with some former lab members. We went to a restaurant recommended by a youtuber.

On Tuesday, there was a plenary talk by Prof. Stephanie Lacour (EPFL) on the efforts of her group in bringing biomedical research in the lab to clinical application. At the development stage in the lab, devices are usually designed for testing using mice. However, the size of human being is far bigger than mice. For lab development, advanced miniaturization is required, however, advanced size maximization is then required for real clinical application.

On the microfluidics, there was a presentation from Lin Lab group @UCB about a 3D printed device to detect waterborne pathogens. This research is particularly interesting to help detecting pathogens in waters in developing countries, where the river are contaminated but people are drinking from there. Many of these countries are still unable to evaluate the quality of their drinking water from the river. However, for mass production (commercialization), I think microfabrication is currently better than 3D printing to reduce the cost.

On the microscopy, there was an interesting talk by a group in Hanyang University about an approach for liquid analysis using TEM. In TEM (or SEM) the observation has to be done in high vacuum. In such environment, liquid usually cannot survive. For that purpose, a chamber which blocks the fluid flow but transparent to electron beam is required. They proposed a nano-chamber using 2 layers of free-standing graphene and self-assembled nanopores in anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membrane.

On the poster session, there was a presentation from Shimoyama Lab group @UTokyo about a gyroscope using sidewall-doped piezoresistive beams. It was the first time for me to hear about the sidewall doping of Si. I found out at the plenary talk from Prof. Shimoyama on the following day about devices realized by this technology. The drive mode of the gyroscope is actuated using electromagnetic actuation.

After finishing the 2nd day of technical program, I went by myself to explore the city. Actually, I am particularly interested to find mosques in the cities I visited. For those who might not know, mosque is a place where muslim (people who hold Islamic belief) usually pray in congregation. This time, I visited Seoul Central Mosque in Itaewon area. It was a huge mosque. I went for a prayer there and found a lot of halal restaurants nearby. In these restaurants muslims can eat without taking care of meat and alcohol restrictions.

Seoul Central Mosque in Itaewon area

On Wednesday, there was a plenary talk by Prof. Shimoyama (UTokyo) on the MEMS for robotics application which he and his group have been doing up to today. Their research topics are very close to our lab's topics. Other than gyroscope which has been presented in the previous day, they use their sidewall Si doping to make piezoresistor to realize their versions of tactile sensors. In this conference, besides the groups of Prof. Lin @UCB and Prof. Takeuchi @UTokyo, there are many presentations also from Prof. Shimoyama's group.

There was a session on gas sensor in this day. There were 2 presentations from Lin Lab @UCB, one of them is presented by Hayasaka-san. They are performing gas sensing mainly using graphene. Their main challenges are to improve the sensitivity and selectivity for a specifically designed gas.

My poster presentation is also scheduled on this day. The positioning of my poster was not so good. I was placed on the outermost part of the hall, with only 3 posters on the same row and all are scheduled in different days. I was presenting alone on that outermost side of the hall. However, some people still kindly visited my poster. Around 20 visitors really listened to my explanation while asking on various things. Some of the visitors are from our industrial partners, such as from S.E.R. Corporation, DENSO, OMRON, Murata (Konno-san) and Huawei (it was not Dr. Liu, but Dr. An, an alumnus of Ono Lab). Some people from KTH (Prof. Niklaus' group) and Prof. Najafi (UMichigan) himself also visited my poster and gave some questions and comments. Overall, I feel that I got some good feedback to our research. This time, I was presenting about our research on a sealed cavity vacuum evaluation system, which we usually call it "zero-balance method". The day was concluded by a banquet party on a floating island at Han River. It was a nice event and I got introduced to some people during the party.

Chair of IEEE MEMS 2019 conference, Prof. Takeuchi (UTokyo) were giving a greeting to the attendees of banquet. Photos taken during the conference is being showed above us, and it seems that Tanaka-sensei is there.

On Thursday, we had a plenary session with Dr. Chaedeok Lee from LG Electronics. He was presenting about smart intelligent system. He also mentioned about edge computing and deep learning for improving context awareness so that devices will be able to interfere and make decision for actions to realize a better quality of human life. Future devices have to be aware of who is who without having to confirm oneselves by password or fingerprint. Event driven sensing and 3D stacking of different devices are of the approaches.

This day marked the end of IEEE MEMS 2019. I learned a lot within this several days. I returned to Sendai on this day in the afternoon with a direct flight. The conference next year will be held in Vancouver, Canada. I hope I will have enough research results to present again in this conference next year. Besides good results, I think story writing is very important to get accepted in this level of conference (maybe even more important than the good result itself for some cases).

Finally, I would like to thank Hirano-sensei and Tanaka-sensei for supervising this research and making my presentation at this conference possible. I also would like to acknowledge all parties which cannot be mentioned one by one for the support.

Kamsahamnida!감사합니다!

Happy New Year 2019

Happy New Year 2019.I am grateful to each one of our members, customers and partners for your great effort and kind support in the last year. It is the sixth year since I launched this laboratory. I would like to make this laboratory the place where your effort is rewarded and your dreams come true.May you have a fruitful year.

Shuji Tanaka

The 35th sensor symposium in Sapporo

The 35th sensor symposium was my first symposium in Japan, so I was super excited to join especially that the venue of the event was in Sapporo, a city that I wanted to visit since I came to Japan. The trip started from Sendai Airport where I met other students I knew from Haga sensei’s lab. We had a chat and I found out that we were going to the same symposium on the same flight and later on our arrival our staying hotels are next to each other. Never mind, I was glad to meet them and we actually met again and again during the event. When I arrived to Sapporo I headed directly to the hotel as it wasn’t far from both the train station and the venue of the symposium, while walking I got already hooked on the city. It was impressive, it had this different style compared to other cities which I visited before in Japan. The streets felt different, big but not too big, the building also, and there was lot of shops. I can say it is a blending of Japanese style and western style. I realized immediately that it is going to be a pleasurable and memorable journey for my staying during the event. I reached the hotel and received the keys for my room, the first thing I did then was to take a nap to rest from the trip and later go explore the city.

I went that evening to downtown and Odori Park, and I tried the local food. There was a lot restaurant and many meal choices for beef and fish. But for the prices, I am not commenting on that—you can guess (It was expensive!!). I recharged my energy that night for the next day because it is important and going to be the opening of the event (I wished Sapporo a good night and went to sleep!).

In the first day of the of the symposium, I was wearing almost formal clothing but not quite there, because I was wearing a sweater (the city was cold). I was surprised that day because everybody in the symposium was wearing a suit except me. Never mind I didn’t take a big attention to that and I believe the same with the other people towards me. I attended the first lecture that day and it was great though it was in Japanese and I didn’t get much of the talk but the videos and illustrations they used were very useful. It was the lecture which I understood the most during the whole symposium. Because it was about some recent innovations in Tokyo university, and I believe they had a good enough budget to make such very good videos. Suzuki sensei was in the lecture room, he was the first guy from our lab who I met in the symposium. He was holding his tablet, I believe he was taking notes and checking some stuff. But later me and him discussed the lecture and he gave me some explanation, especially about this marker that can be used like on paper to connect electrical elements.

After the opening of the symposium and the first lecture we had posters time. It was then when I started meeting the rest of our lab members. Muroyama sensei was one of the jury, so he was checking almost all the posters, and trying to pick best posters for the event. The rest of our lab members were poster presenters; Tsukamoto-sensei, Hirano-sensei, Liu-san, Chen-san, Nomoto-san, Teranishi-san, me and also Suzuki-sensei. Our presenting sessions were spread through the three days of the event. We were all presenting posters in the hall except Shao-san who had a power point presentation in a room and he delivered it in English.

The first day of the symposium was long as there was three lectures and two sessions for poster presentations. At the end of the day fortunately there was a ceremony with food and drinks so we sat together, me, Shao-san, Lieu-san, Chen-san and Moroyama-sensei and enjoyed.

When the party finished, we decided as lab mates to go to the city to explore it. We went fast to our hotels, changed our clothing and went down town. We visited some famous spots in Sapporo city like Otori Park, Sapporo TV tower, Clock tower and Susukino. We agreed to go to karaoke that night but when we reach to a one in the city, we asked each other who is going to sing, everybody was saying I am a terrible singer, I can’t sing, I supposed that you guys are going to sing, and this was the words of everyone of us—me, Shao-san, Chen-san and Liu-san. So we canceled it at the last moment. We went just for a walk in Susukino and took pictures. At 10pm we went back to our hotels to rest from this long day and prepare for tomorrow.

The second day was almost like the first day, tough this time I suited up, because I didn’t want to look different this time or to be noticed that I am not formally dressed. The rest of the schedule was almost the same during the three days of the event. We had lecture sessions, poster sessions and presentation sessions. On this day I also saw other Tohoku University students and sensei’s like Ono-sensei, Haga-sensei. Tohoku University was well presented on force in the symposium. We had many presenters from our university with important works, which I was very proud of.

At the end of that day Hirano-sensei invited us for a dinner, I went with Teranishi-san, Liu-san, Shao-san, and Chen-san. It was my last night in Sapporo city. Hirano-sensei asked us where do we go, and what do we want to eat—I was into beef and some other members also, so we agreed to go to an izakaya downtown. Going there we passed by the Ichibancho of Sapporo (Ichibancho is like a phenomenon in all the big cities in Japan). That night was Halloween so the arcade was full of people disguised and dressed in frightening and funny characters. it was obvious that they did an elaborate work to look like Dracula, Avatar, Witches, Superheroes…There was a plenty of them. We watched them little bit, took pictures and continued looking for a place where to eat because we were hungry that night.

The place which we ended up choosing that night was cosy, with an interesting decoration. It had these big filament lumps which I didn’t see like them before. The rest of the decor was made of wood so in general it was nice place. The menu was in Japanese but it had a QR code for English translation, that was also interesting. So we ordered some good fish and beef, and other small stuff, and a lot of drinks. Liu-san looked red and glowy, so asked him “are you ok!” “why do you look like that?”. He said it is this thing so called “Asian glow”. So there is some people when they drink alcohol their skin color changes and they get some certain glow. But nothing to worry about. We talked about our lab that night and its history and we had a lot fun. At the end of the dinner Hirano-sensei payed most of the bill. Shao-san payed a little bit higher than us because he is a stuff member now, but we appreciated very much the gesture.

Later we went back to our hotels but this time we did it through these city underground tunnels. I was impressed! Sapporo city had like an other small city in its underground. There was a lot shops and small streets and subway. You need a map and you should follow signs to navigate under, it felt like a separate secret city and it was nice. I have never saw such a thing in such a scale before.

When I reached my hotel, I just changed my clothing and went to a Halloween party in the city. It was also amazing. They had this contest for best costume, and I had to see some the mind blowing ideas for disguising. The costume which I liked the most and I found funny was this group of people who tried to look like an African tribe members. I must admit, they were kind of very successful. I went late back to the hotel that night-- Also tomorrow Suzuki sensei told me he went to a party the night before but I am not sure which one was it.

The third day of the symposium was very time limited and I had my schedule a little bit tight. It was the day of my presentation so I had to be well prepared. When it was the lecture session before my poster presentation session, I couldn’t find my spot on the poster boards. the number of my poster in the pamphlet didn’t exist on all boards. So I had to look over and over in the two floors of the symposium. Fortunately I had Yoyo, a friend from Haga lab who was helping me, so he figured out that there was a mistake in my number and that my name is in an other board with a different number. Never mind, it was not a big problem and I am glad that I found my name. I fixed my poster and stand waiting for the the time of the poster session to start. People arrived and I am glad that there were many people who were interested in my work. I explained to a variety of people and I had some Japanese who listened to my presentation, some of them asked me to try to speak slowly and so I did. I explained to people from companies, students of other universities. And almost all our lab member visited me. It went well and I didn’t find much difficulties for responding to questions. I was almost finally done with the conference.

At the concluding session, the committee of the symposium rewarded the remarkable participants who did some excellent work. From our lab we had Suzuki sensei who won the award for best poster. It was a big honor for him and our lab. We were super happy for him and the work he has done. Yoshida-sensei was also nominated for best picture but unfortunately he didn't win. But we were also glad that he made it so far to get nominated.

At the end of event, they presented important dates and information concerning the next year symposium. They said it is going to be held in HAMAMATSU from 19/11/2019 to 21/11/2019 . Hopefully that time we will all also participate and try to win more awards.

I visited Hokkaido university that day in a hurry and headed to the train station to catch the train to the airport because I had my fight at 5pm. Sapporo has this very old nice university made of brown bricks. A lot trees, and because it was autumn season, colors of trees gave the campus a great scenery.

I Boarded the plane, and the view of the sky that evening was amazing. Three colors were blending together in the air, the dark blue of the night with orange beams of the sun set and the color of the ground. It felt magical—Good buy Sapporo—Thank you very much for the trip!

We got lucky with great weather for imoni-party.We made senndai style imoni and yamagata style one. Sendai style imoni is made of pork and miso, and Yamagata style one is made of beef and soy sauce. Yamagata style imoni which we made was very special. Khan-san helped us to make it. Thank you very much.